Through the train window

Ever since I bought my first digital camera I've been taking photos out of train windows. I love the blurred landscapes often with distorted reflections superimposed .

I used some of the photos in journal quilts in 2004 and 2005, including one about my experience on 7/7/2005 when I was on the last train from Kings Cross seconds before the bombs went off. I was at a meeting in Peterborough and thought I would be stranded there with no information about what had happened to friends and family. In the end I got home very late thanks to someone giving me a lift well out of his way and coming into Ealing from Reading on the train.

Several times I've thought of returning to this idea of a sequence of blurred photos taken out of a train, inspired by the 'Separate Landscape' series of Atsuhide Ito   - a serialization of Utagawa Hiroshige's The 53 Stations of the Tokaido from 1833.

The question is which series of photos to use?? The ones  I took  in Japan are probably the most interesting partially due to the speed of the Shinkansen. I loved the familiarity of the images ( tracks, pylons , stations, etc) but also the differences: the scale of landscape, the colours (bright green rice fields) and shapes of buildings.

Light and Shadow - Indigo Hill Arches

Indigo Hill Arches

48 x 36 cm

Two black and white images  of  'Hill Arches' sculpture by Henry Moore combined in  Photoshop, printed on hand dyed indigo cotton and silk treated with 'BubbleJet Set'.  Machine quilted with variagated threads, hand stitched with 'House of Embroidery' cotton perle thread .  

There's nothing like a deadline to concentrate the mind! When the theme of 'Light and Shadow' was set  I had lots of grandious ideas of looking at some pewter vases from multiple viewpoints and on  large scale. Then with reveal date looming and nothing started I remembered a  top I'd put together for a demonstration on inkjet printing using 'poster printing' function to split an image over 4 A4 sheets.The Henry Moore sculpture that so inspired me was part of an exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2007. I loved having access to these sculptures for so many months, able to view them in different lights and viewpoints and  I made several journal quilts exploring ways of  intepreting  a 3D piece in 2D textiles. This piece expands on those ideas.

After I'd machine quilted it, it was looking rather drab and uninteresting so I decided to stitch more into by hand. I haven't done much hand stitching in a while and I'd forgotten how addictive it is , sewing away watching BBC4. Still a bit dull ( and perhaps I got carried away with the stitching....) but hugely enjoyable and it's got me thinking again about indigo.

This challenge has been such  a great motivator. Thanks very much to Annabel and Marion for setting up and running it. Looking forward to seeing what everybody else has come up with (and the next challenge!)

Mags

Pewter Pots and Paths not Travelled

 Every time we eat in the dining-room, I admire the pewter vases that my mum collected ( we used to have a vast ugly pewter tea urn but that was sold) . I've been thinking of sketching them for the 'Grey side of life' theme of Sketchbook Project 2012. I love the subtlety of form and light and shadow so it fit well with this challenge too. I've already used them in 'Lunaria' quilt ( see below before the honesty seed cases smothered it! ) but they deserve to star in their own piece!

 Then there's the Taplow Vase for 'Whatever Floats Your Boat' at Slough Museum

 I don't know quite how I ended up with this when something on the lines of this Picasso painting was what I had in mind. Time to revisit it I think.

Introducing Mags

Hi, I'm Margaret (Mags for short) and I'm a  year younger than Marion , Angela and Liz. Something about reaching 50... I've been doing a lot of navel gazing and not much quilting this year so the idea of a challenge shared with your company is just what I need.
I work full time as a scientist at Kew Gardens, married to Ian for 6 years, no children . We've lived in this house in Brentford for 4 years - large enough to hold  thousands of books ( the only duplicate  a Delia Smith cookery book!) 3 computers and my stash of fabric and art supplies which is not small. I have the biggest room  as my office/studio.

I have always painted  and drawn and have been stitching almost as long ( my  mother did C&G embroidery in the 70's and taught patchwork and quilting). I've been making Journal Quilts for the last 8 years but my preference is for working on a larger scale ( I'm glad to see that there's no size constaint here!) I set up a website a few months ago  and I've been blogging since 2007 (magsramsay - experiments with textiles, paints and plants ).
Looking forward to seeing what everybody comes up with!
Mags